Before you believe the dire cuts claimed by advertisments and our law makers, it is always good to review the facts.  I was curious on trends in Per Pupil spending in California as well as what has our teacher base looked like over the last few years.  All I hear is massive cuts, layoffs, and less money to work with.

Here is what I found.  My source is ed-data.  The site takes the information reported by every school district in California to the department of education and summarizes the data in nice charts and demographics.  The nice thing about this site is that it is actual data and not put together with any agenda.  It is simply a partnership between the department of education, California, and the site to generate easy to read stats on our schools.  I encourage you to visit the site.

Here our some interesting facts.

School Spending from 2003-2008:

Dropout Rates: 2003-2007

Revenu/Spending

Staffing

Despite the messages from our media and legislators the numbers show the following:

-4,506 new teachers since 2003.
-Education spending has increased from $43B to $52B or 21% in five years.
-Per pupil spending has gone from $7,598 to $9,045. (All in costs including fees not in expenses as reported by EDU)
-15,951 new non-teaching positions added. (no wonder we can’t hire new teachers).

Even with a 21% increase in spending and 20K jobs added, the drop out rate has increased from 13.3% to 21.1%.

The truth is that we have added more money and not seen any noticeable changes. It is not the fault of the teachers or the condition of the schools. It is the system that is broken. Unfortunately our children are being used as pawns by the law makers and the unions to gain power and revenue. If they truly had the best interest of our children in mind, they would not defend every job, every paycheck, and every program. The workforce is over 600K jobs, there needs to be a way to reduce the dead weight in a fair manner. When dead weight is reduced, efficiency improves and pay goes up for everyone. We basically have a system that says if a job is not getting done by a group, instead of making cuts or holding that group responsible, you simply hire a new group to fix the problem while retaining the old group and the best part is that we the tax payers are ok with it.

I bet you could survey every school in California by the kids and get ratings on teachers that would give good insight into who should stay and who should go. Unfortunately we don’t trust our own kids. I can tell you in High School, we all new who the “kickback” teachers were. One teacher was so bad that 50% of the time he slept during the class. It was an English class and I only opened a English book twice. On the other end of the spectrum we had several teachers that did not follow the “criteria” and inspired debate and trust. The assignments were meant to inspire thinking and researching followed by group debate and discussions for all sides of an argument. They made an effort and to this day I still remember the classes, silly thing is, those two teachers were the teachers that the administrators punished. Why, parents complained the discussions were to advanced and off criteria. Amazing, no one complains about the teacher sleeping in class, but try to inspire thinking and all hell breaks.

What can we do? Demand reform and hold our representatives and administrators responsible. Tell the unions that while we agree that teachers are valuable and need higher pay be only if they can agree to ensure accountability and waste prevention. The argument has become so tainted that just by saying no against the schools puts you on the same ground as a convicted felon. The truth is, the majority of people (democrats and republicans) want our children to have a good education. I would even argue that most would want to pay teachers more if our tax burden was not so bad, but that can not happen until the system shows that there is not waste. Simply giving it more money is not a solution. We are smarter than that and should demand better of our representatives.

If you live in California, you have no doubt heard the advertising for Proposition 1a-f. You have also heard the large amount of advertising regarding school budgets, layoffs, and the dire circumstances our kids will be in if new taxes are not passed.

All the advertising, all the protests, and all the speeches by unions and democrats, have a common theme. More money is required or teachers will lose their jobs. Why do very few question this? If you do question this, how come you are instantly tarnished?

If California thinks that its most important jobs are teachers, then how come the leaders threaten to go there first to fix budget shortfalls? If you are running a company and have to cut costs, do you layoff your most important staff first? Off course not. The leaders and organizations who threaten our teachers should be the ones questioned. If they care, like they claim, they would find other methods besides raising the burden on California by waiving teacher layoffs at us.

The leaders are simply using scare tactics to push through agendas without accountability. This is why government policy should never be created from emotions. It is easy to say you support schools and pass every measure, tax the smokers, tax the rich, tax any other group not considered socially acceptable, and feel like you have done a good thing. Problem is, the parties responsible for running these programs have no accountability. If they mess up, if they produce poor results, if they run bad programs, the answer is simple, ask for more money. This is destructive to our economy, it is destructive to our society, and don’t think for a minute the schools students don’t see the flaws. We need accountability. We can have superior schools, improve drop out rates, and have programs that result in highly educated children with out massive budget increases every year. The goal of our leaders should be improving processes and education, not how to best position our kids to pass taxes and budget increases. The unions should stop worrying how to get more money and use their resources to help improve our teachers and run schools more efficiently. They should be protesting poorly run programs and not preserving every job no matter how poorly it is done or how irrelevant it is.

If accountability is established where bad leaders, bad teachers, and bad programs are weeded out. Efficiency will return, budgets will be reduced, and at that point higher pay and better benefits can be given because California will see a noticeable difference. As it stands today, the only thing California sees is more and more requests for money without any noticeable improvements. It is not a surprise California residents are starting to say enough is enough.

If you have not heard of Janet Napolitano, she is our current Homeland Security Secretary where in a recent interview she referred to terrorists attacks as “Man Created Disasters”. Her reasoning? She wants to move away from the politics of fear. Additionally, operations under the Global War on Terror are now to be called Oversees Contingency Operations.

I suppose we don’t want to offend any terrorists by calling them what they are. Unfortunately this is what the far left is best at. Taking any group they choose and turning them into a victim. What is hard to understand is why doesn’t anyone object? Why does the media latch on like a puppy that just learned a new trick. Really, it makes no sense.

When you feel that a wrong has been done to a certain group, the way our society fixes the problem is changing the reference. Why? It takes people’s attention away from the problem and directs their attention to something new. By doing this, injustices can slowly be forgotten and acceptance can begin. The question is, why do we want to forget what a terrorist is? Why do we want to accept their actions? And more importantly, what injustices do we think we have done?

It is important to understand that many of these large organizations base there ideology on radical religious beliefs. These groups have existed for hundreds of years and the only crime we have done is to exist under laws and freedoms they disagree with. It is not anything the Bush administration did, it is not the Fat Cats on Wall Street, and it is certainly not anything you or I did. It is one thing to take a strategy of ignorance and hope nothing happens on your soil, but it is entirely different to take a strategy that somehow reduces the immoral behavior of these groups and replaces it with a burden of responsibility for their actions. Given the speeches by Obama and the change in tone and terms, that is exactly the path we are taking. We are hoping that if we don’t talk about terrorism and apologize for being the big bad US that we will defeat the terrorists. It is unlikely. It only makes us weak and vulnerable.

One thing to consider, we have always been an open of forgiving country. Our land is filled with many different nationalities with all different religious beliefs. When people migrate here, they have the freedom to practice what they want and pursue whatever makes them happy without persecution. That is our strength as well as our compassion and forgiveness. Is that not proof enough of our intentions? Why must we apologize?

Today Obama signed into law the 2009 Omnibus Spending bill.  As mentioned in a previous post, the bill funds operations for many government programs at the cost of $410B.  Much of the spending is based from previous budgets, but this package does include increases in all programs with about $7B in earmarks.

The overall spending increase from the previous year is approximately 8% or $32B according to the Committee on Appropriations office.  This increase does not include the already identified funds from the Stimulus package which bring the entire spending to $680B.

House Appropriations Ranking Republican Jerry Lewis summarizes in this section of a speech he gave on the house floor:

“Mr. Speaker, like many of my colleagues, I’m embarrassed by this Omnibus spending bill and the process that created it. Even as the President talks about the need to put our economic house in order, this House continues to spend and spend and spend and spend. Clearly, this Congress has lost its way.

“Not one of the nine spending bills in this Omnibus was ever considered by the full House. Six of the nine bills in this package were never considered by the full Appropriations Committee. One more time we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars with no debate, no amendments, and no Member input. Yes, clearly this Congress has lost its way.

“It’s now standard operating procedure that only a handful of Members in leadership are actually involved in writing significant legislation. That has been true with every supplemental spending package the House has considered over the last two years. That was true in the development of the $789 billion stimulus package passed by the House two weeks ago. And that is true once again today

“Under the rule just adopted, Members have one hour to debate $410 billion in spending with no opportunity to offer amendments. That equates to nearly $7 billion for every minute of debate. Sadly, the vast majority of our Members will have no voice in crafting this measure.

“The fiscal year 2009 Omnibus bill contains funding for nine out of the 12 regular appropriations bills—a total of $410 billion. The new fiscal year began on October 1st and today—nearly five months later—we’re jamming the work that should have been done last year into one massive, last-minute, “take-it-or-leave-it” spending bill.

“The spending in this legislation represents a $32 billion, or eight percent, increase over last year for the very same agencies and programs. With the exception of the spending boost after the September 11th attacks, this represents the largest annual federal government spending increase since 1978.

A little entertaining rant from Jim Cramer.  It will be interesting to see the wrath brought on by this.  Anyone defending “fat cats” puts themselves on the stake to be burned whether they make a logical point or not.  Right now, emotion controls our markets and policy and until that subsides, civil and logical debates will not occur.

The house passed the 2009 Omnibus Spending bill with heavy democratic support.  While this is a normal appropriations bill that usually comes in nine separate packages, this year all nine were wrapped into one and held through the elections in order to have a better chance of passing.  The problem is combined with the stimulus bill, the Omnibus spending bill substantially increases many of the Government programs to levels never seen before.

Wasn’t one of the problems of Bush massive spending problems?  Here is a summary of 2008 spending under this bill compared to the new 2009 spending levels when combined with the stimulus package:

This bill is being pushed through under the table and with little changes.  In case you are interested, here is a link to the earmark letters to this bill provided by the democratic appropriations board (be warned it is a large PDF 35megs).  35megs of letters for earmarks!

Shouldn’t a bill of this size be debated?

Senator Loni Hancock is currently leading efforts to change current regulation required for Budget approval from two - thirds majority to a simple majority. In a letter to her supporters, she says “The 2/3rds vote requirement and “The Pledge” held the Democratic majority in the State Legislature hostage for my entire term in the State Assemble. Year after year we have negotiated against ourselves about what to give up and give away to get enough Republican votes to reach 2/3rds. Year after year, budgets were late. In the end they were primarily based on cuts, accounting gimmicks and borrowing.”

No matter what side you sit on, changing our current policy in CA would prove detrimental to the tax payers of the State. CA for the past 50 years has been lead by a Democratic majority, while this may be a bad or good thing depending on the what side you sit on, one thing is certain. One party rule will corrupt no matter how good the intentions of the individuals are. We see it in businesses, we see time after time in government, and we see it in individual behavior. Senator Hancock claims that this will speed up the process which is true, but at what cost? The only reason CA residents know so much about their budget is due to the delay in getting it passed. Voters have an opportunity to asses and comment on the budget process. If you remove that and basically give the power to one party to simply push through any changes, you lose accountability.

California tax payers need views from all points because there are no easy solutions. A budget cut or tax increase are not always the answer not are tax cuts. The right answer is a sustainable budget that controls wasteful spending and taxes appropriately while allowing residents to keep as much money as possible. Anyone that thinks it is a good idea to hand a blank check to a group of politicians (republican or democrats) does not care about their own money or the health of the state. Politicians will spend every dollar given to them and making the process easier to distribute hard earned cash by CA residents only promotes wasteful spending.

I urge everyone to call Senator Hancock and voice your opposition. (510) 286-1333

I have read and talked to a lot of people regarding the stimulus and one thing seems in common. Very few have looked at the details of what is being proposed. I don’t see how you can have an opinion either way if you don’t at least read the top level sections of the Stimulus.  You can read it here.

The bill is now up to 1,588 pages and $850B. This is up from 320 pages and $700B. What is in the extra 1,200 pages?

I would like to remind all to keep in perspective a few things.

1. In the debates between Obama and McCain, Obama argued many times that one of the first things he was going to do is go through every program and eliminate waste and outdated programs.

2. One of the biggest complaints about the Bush administration was the enormous spending without controls.

This bill does not achieve Obama’s stated plan and it continues the policies that Bush set forth.  Sure it is different groups, but the concept is the same, massive spending without controls.

I think it is time to put our party sides away and as responsible Americans look at what this bill is proposing and object to our congressmen the junk. It is also time for us to demand the cuts that should accompany a bill of this nature promised by Obama.   A combination of spending + cuts goes much better than a new spending bill on top of an already overspent federal government.

Just because Obama is a democrat, does not mean you have to agree with a bill being rushed through without proper considerations. Nor should anyone form an opinion on whether this will work or not with out at least knowing some of the things this bill does.

We wanted change, but a bill of this nature is not change. It is a giant collection for every congressman’s pet project (democrats and republicans alike) that may or may not help our economy. If we want to fix this economy, we have to put a leash on our representatives and pass through things that help, not things that help get some person or group re-elected.

We also should not subscribe to the doom. It is bad, there is no doubt, but that is not an excuse to exercise poor judgment. I urge all to read the package as much as possible and send objections to your representative.

In comments made by John Dugan (head of the U.S. office of the Comptroller of the Currency), home loans that received modifications for troubled home owners, still default at an alarming 53% after 6-months.

From Reuters: Dugan states “The results, I confess, were somewhat surprising, and not in a good way”.

The data was collected from many of the large banks and was not based on surveys, but on real measurable data.

I hardly see how this data is surprising. What law makers fail to realize is that many of these homes are to much for the families no matter how much the re-modify the loan. They do not take into account the other expensive like up keep, insurance, utilities, etc. This may not have been an issue, but if you look back at the loans that were offered in the housing boom, many of these families had far to much of their monthly income dedicated to a home at the lower fixed rate.

People bought on an expectation the market would continue to increase and interest rates would remain low. If your three year arm is ready to expire, no problem, just refinance. What this means is that people were buying the absolute maximum house they could based on the lower fixed rate portion of their loan.

If these families applied for a fixed 30-year loan, they may have only been able to afford 30-50% less house, but that is not the case. So fast forward to the loan re-modifications. What they achieve in most cases is bringing the loan payment somewhere close to the low fixed rate they began with. That is fine, but what happens when gas triples or food cost doubles? There is no extra income for these families. Keep in mind, a lot of these families make good money, they just can’t afford a $700K house no matter how you structure it.

The banks are traditionally against loan re-modifications. The exact reason is complicated as it has to do with earnings and liability, but in this particular market a over weighing factor is the very fact that they do not have a good success rate. Looking at a families income, credit score, and other debit can and does give a very good baseline on what the success of such a program should be.

In a rush to save everyone and not offend anyone, our law makers make very expensive mistakes. Right now all the money is going to the most irresponsible of borrowers and to the banks who worked themselves into this mess. Do you really expect good results with this approach? The right approach is to save the families that can and have the ability to not default, provide a vehicle for families to transition out of a home and into a rental, and provide funding to interested parties that want to buy housing defaults in exchange for providing below market rents to families in trouble for a fixed time. For any system to work, it needs to stimulate all parties, wealthy, poor, and business, not just the troubled.

A surprise, not really, an expensive experiment, absolutely.

It is difficult to find details of how our Government is spending the $700B bailout, but from what I have found here are the recipients so far: 

It sure would be nice for the Treasury Department to give us an official list.  I have a requested the information, but I doubt anything will come of it.